notes/ JRalske

65th Birthday and 25th Death-day for the German Democratic Republic

Recommended reading: a concise philosphical look at the motivation behind the never-ending demonization of the GDR, published in JUNGE WELT by Hagen Bonn. (original German)

He writes that the history of West Germany is the history of negative celebrations. Every year, we are reminded of June 17th (defeat of “rebellion” in GDR), then August 13th (division of Germany), then the 9th of November, as the Fall of the Berliner Wall but much more quietly that day is also the anniversary of the Nazi “Reichskristallnacht”…

We are supposed to associate the 3rd Reich and the GDR as equal negatives according to West German official history. The unasked question : is state-sanctioned facism really as dead (since May 8th,1945) as GDR socialism is supposed to be dead (since November 9th, 1989)?